Monthly Archives: July 2019
Read the lawsuits
Summary:
The center moved to a larger facility in 2014 to accommodate the needs of the center and the community who needed a place to take wildlife, also becoming a fully-fledged wildlife veterinary hospital in the process of doing so. The center fully operated and existed without an issue or complaint from any neighbors in the neighborhood — if anything, our existence was supported.
One new neighbor (Stan Seymour and Jane Seymour) purchased their adjacent property in December of 2017 and the other property near but not adjacent (Adrian Maver and Blaine Creasy) purchased theirs in August 2017. All the properties share a private road that goes through both the plaintiffs property which they now own.
After the change of property ownership in 2017 several instances of threatening or intimidating behavior were documented by the neighbors towards members of the center, eventually culminating in three different lawsuits against the center.
Their aggressive actions suggest they want the center to shut down or forcefully move and have taken the center before Zoning, Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors over the center’s existence. The center’s property was zoned agricultural for decades before it was purchased by the center in 2013, which allows for a veterinary hospital to exist with that zoning. The two neighbors have at various points accused the center in the media of speeding on the private gravel road, noise, smells, dumping carcasses, biological waste, and of improper zoning and permits. They fought the approval of our proposed raptor flight building (a building that would allow the center to provide better long term rehabilitative care for injured eagles and other large birds of prey) which the County of Roanoke approved unanimously at every step of the way.
The center is a non-profit, volunteered-based veterinary/rehab facility funded on donations from everyday people in the community. Our wildlife patients need a quiet, clean, and calm atmosphere to heal, and the neighbors have taken actions that have both have disturbed the recovery our patients and have been threatening towards our staff and volunteers. The neighbors have the money to hire attorneys and sue the center repetitively, filing two different lawsuits appealing the County of Roanoke’s unanimous decision and then a third lawsuit for defamation, costing the center money it doesn’t have and risks bankrupting the center if these needless legal actions continues.
There is no other rehabilitation center of this classification in the entire western half of Virginia and is only one of three facilities of this type in the whole of Virginia. The loss of the center would be detrimental to the community and to the wildlife of southwestern Virginia, especially for endangered/threatened species and eagles, as we are the only facility locally who can legally provide long-term care for those species.
Lawsuits in their entirety can be read here:
1) Lawsuit 1
2) Lawsuit 2
SUNDAY MORNING
SUNDAY MORNING
On the Saturday before Mothers’ Day, I went to the Wildlife Center to see if I could round up some volunteers to staff the clinic so Sabrina would have a never-before-heard-of day off.
Most of our volunteers are women, and an amazing proportion of them are or have mothers; so, no luck. I showed up early Sunday morning so Sabrina could sleep in. I figured I and the few volunteers present could get through the morning chores and I could still get to church.
It was not to be…
As I was about to leave, a lady arrived with a nearly dead baby groundhog. She had found him motionless on her lawn that same morning. He was dripping wet, comatose, and as cold as ever a barely-alive being has ever been. He was so young – five weeks old- and so small – he easily fit in my hand.
I set about what seemed to be a hopeless task: trying to resuscitate this little one. Not only was he severely hypothermic, but dehydrated with a cat wound on his flank. He was covered with fleas; his wound crawled with maggots.
So I set to work, drying, warming, and stimulating. Then comb him free of his infestations, then sub-cutaneous fluids. Two hours; a lot of activity; many prayers for intervention.
I shall never know why certain of these little ones summon my heart and my spirit as they do; but clearly and without warning this became my sole and proper task, for this little one was ‘in my path.’ That I was supposed to be there – and nowhere else – could not have been more clear to me. For those two hours, he was the length and breadth of my universe. My entire existence shrank to the size of one desperately sick baby groundhog; there was nothing else above, below or beside. Also, there was this: Although frustratingly hard to explain, it seemed I was part of a harmony, a resonance with something which, odd to say, was inside me, yet beyond. I truly was taken to a plane so deep in me I wonder if I had left… me. It’s a wonderful, frightening [will he die?], transcendent place to be; there, all around you stands motionless.
Today he is thriving; re-united in a large cage with his two siblings. He chucks happily whenever he sees me. ‘Chucking’ is groundhog vernacular for ‘G’Day, Lucky! Grand to see you, old chap!’ Of course his two littermates also chuck although they don’t know me from Adam’s Woodchuck.
The minister who was to have guided our group’s discussion that Sunday is Stuart Revercomb. He is a truly spiritual man who is tolerant of the trudging steps of my religious skepticism. His wisdom bestows upon him the patience to give me the time I need to find my own. Lately, he has been trying to acquaint me with the concept of ‘The Holy Spirit.’ I expect he’ll have something to say about this intersection of paths, this little ground hog and me. Thinking about it, Stuart may well be right.
So, I missed church last Sunday, but I did not miss, it seems, Communion.